Hot, but not too hot
“When I say it is a competitive market, it is not like it was four years ago,” Jose Medina, a Cleveland-based Keller Williams broker and team leader, said. “For example, I just listed a home and within 24 hours I had two offers on it. The same house three years ago would have had at least nine offers in the first three days. It is a very strong sellers’ market, but it is not as robust as it once was.”
Medina attributes some of this to the state’s inventory situation. While not necessarily good, it is better than it was at the height of the pandemic market.
As of April 4, the 90-day average number of active single family listings was 11,669, down from nearly 30,000 listings in November 2019. Even with that drop, it is still up from a pandemic market trough of 6,916 listings in late April 2022, according to HousingWire Data.
Although local Ohio real estate professionals are glad to see more inventory on the market, it is not nearly enough to satiate demand. As of earlier this month the 90-day average number of single family listings hitting the market each week was 1,407, fractionally above the number of new listings for the same week over in the past four years. But the figure is still below the April 2019 number of 2,295 listings.
Sellers hold out
Ohio-based real estate professionals attribute the lack of listings to the current interest rate environment.
“There are a lot of sellers sitting on their houses because they have a low interest rate,” Michelle Billings, the president of Ohio Association of Realtors and a Coldwell Banker Realty agent, said. “Also, with the rising home prices, while they may have a lot of equity, the majority of that equity is going to go into the next house they buy and not all sellers want to do that.”
Medina also believes the current cohort of inventory is not enticing enough for some potential sellers to pull the plug and list.
“There is not a lot of…